(As I've said elsewhere, I'm very annoyed with the lack of Pyramid, so I'm just going to have to put this here.)
So your adventurers are doing a heist in some useless aristocrat’s palace and break into the office where all the important administrative work is done and probably all the incriminating documents are. So what, exactly, do they find there?
Every technological regime has its own office equipment. An office in 2000 had paper and pens and staplers and rubber bands all that, but it also had desktop or tower computers with attached monitors and other peripherals, printers, cables, power strips, and all kinds of other accessories you wouldn’t have had in an office in, say, 1950, where the highest technology you’d find would be typewriters (maybe electric ones by that time) and phones capable of switching between multiple lines. In 1900, the typewriters would have been manual, and if there were multiple phone lines into the office, they’d have to go through a switchboard operator, though there might have been a pneumatic tube system for internal message and small packages. In 1850, there weren’t even phones or typewriters, just pens, ink, and people delivering messages in person or on paper. So an office in an historical campaign or a fantasy campaign in pseudo-historical drag won’t look like one today.
For the use of gamers, then, here’s a survey of the kinds of things you might find in an office from antiquity to the eve of the Industrial Revolution, which is to say in GURPS terms, TL1 through TL4. This article references concepts in GURPS, but it’s mostly information which can be ported to any system.
Writing Media and Tools
At the heart of any office space is equipment for recording information, and different ways of producing texts led to different kinds of writing equipment. (Stats for most items can be found in GURPS Low-Tech, pp. 46-48.)
In Mesopotamia (TL1), the primary writing medium was moist clay. Clay tablets were written on by making impressions with a triangular stylus. The stylus was originally a species of reed, but later other materials were shaped with a triangular cross section. In the hot, dry climate of Mesopotamia, tablets needing preservation could simply be left to dry.
Nearly everywhere else in the Old World, though, and Mesoamerica as well practiced writing traditions involving ink on writing surface, but there are different traditions within that. Writing surfaces have included:
- Flat sheets of wood
- Scrolls made by fastening together strips of wood or bamboo like a sushi rolling mat (a particularly East Asian practice)
- Pith-based media like papyrus and rice paper (both involve slicing the pith of reeds into long strips and pressing them together into a flexible writing surface; papyrus was common in the ancient west but phased out of use in Europe through the early Middle Ages)
- Bark cloth (a material made by soaking, pounding, and chemically processing the inner bark of suitable trees, and the most common writing medium in Mesoamerica)
- Fabric
- Parchment (fairly common in Europe and parts of the Middle East)
- True paper (first few centuries AD for China, becoming common in the Muslim world around the ninth century, and the late Middle Ages in Europe).
The East Asian tradition involves using a brush, and writers in that tradition are likely to have similar sets of equipment:
- Brushes: Any serious writer will have a set of brushes of differing fineness, often hanging on a small rack or contained in a cup-like brush holder.
- Ink sticks: East Asian inks have typically been based on soot. This was combined a binder, usually an animal-based glue, and dried for long-term storage. Fine ink sticks might be pressed into decorative molds, painted, or mixed with aromatic ingredients. A more complete set of writing implements might include sticks made with pigments like cinnabar instead of soot.
- Ink stone: Despite the name, an ink stone might be made from stone, metal, or ceramic. An ink stone is typically a dish of modest size, usually with on end deeper than the other. A writer makes ink as necessary by grinding an ink stick and dribbling in water until the mixture reaches desired shade.
- Ink: Westerners and Mesoamericans originally used soot-based inks as well, but by the late Roman era (late TL2), Europe and the Middle East also saw the adoption of an ink based on a chemical reaction. Oak galls (nodules grown in reaction to certain infections) are heavy in tannins. If mixed with iron sulfate, the solution turns brown-black and, if mixed with a binder like gum arabic, makes an excellent ink, somewhat more resistant to water than soot ink. It also tends to be at least a little corrosive, so it eats slightly into the paper rather than sitting on the surface, enhancing the durability of the writing against water but, depending on the precise concentration of iron sulfate, potentially limiting the long-term life of the document as the ink eats through the writing surface.
- Inkwell: Once mixed, ink was stored in a small pot which could be used at the writing desk. Ink was usually produced in liquid form, though for travel and long term storage, some scribes boiled down their ink until only solid residues remained and added water later to turn it back into ink. Inkwells were made from a variety of materials. Hollow horns were popular in Europe to the point that some desks had holes bored into them around the edge to accommodate them. However, they might also be metal, ceramic, or any other material capable of containing liquids. (Egyptian writing was a bit of an exception. Egyptian scribes kept their ink in solid blocks and wet the ends of their pens to rub against the ink to transfer it for writing.)
- Pen knife: Once upon a time, pen knives were actually used for pens. Pen knives tended to have small but very sharp blades, resembling a modern hobby knife. They could also be used on more durable writing surfaces like parchment to score guide lines and scrape off mistakes. Any blade could be used in a pinch, but a purpose-made pen knife is $5, negligible weight, and if used (ill-advisedly) in combat does thr-4 cut, range C.
- Pens: A wide range of solid objects which could deliver a thin line of ink on a writing surface was used. Reeds were very common, and quills came into use in Europe late in the Middle Ages. The reed or quill was cut at a sharp angle to come to a point or straight edge, and the concave inner surface of the hollow pen served as a small ink reservoir, usually good for several words. The point of the pen eventually became soft and mushy through use, but the writer could resharpen it by cutting a bit more off the end. Wealthier writers had metal pens with nibs resembling those of modern fountain pens. (Mesoamerican writing traditions were a bit mixed, using both pens and brushes.)
Other Tools
Depending on the specific writing tradition and how well equipped the writer is, an office may contain a number of other items.
Correction equipment: Inevitably, things go wrong. A scribe writes the wrong character, the pen makes a splotch on the page, and so on, and the text must be corrected. Sometimes, there are formal guidelines for making corrections with standard writing equipment. Some traditions had customary correction marks, obscuring mistakes or providing corrected text in line with the error. These might involve the use of a special color of ink; the editor’s red “pen” goes a long way back in both Egypt and China. However, some traditions would remove rather than preserve and circumvent the error. White paint has been used in the same way as modern correction fluids for thousands of years. And more durable writing surfaces like parchment can have errors rubbed out rather than covered up, scraped away with a pen knife or a piece of pumice.
Formularies: Formularies are sort of the ancient version of how-to manuals. While the same name is given to medical texts giving instructions on how to compound drugs (and it’s also used for spell books!), in the context of offices and scribes it means a book of examples and instructions for how to compose documents. For example, it might provide formats for making tax demands or petition to a ruler, lists of proper forms of address for various aristocrats and clergy, deeds, contracts, statements from witnesses, and so on. Formularies tended to be individually collected or shared and copied among relatively small groups of people, so different writers may have very different fomularies, or even several formularies for different purposes.
Magnifiers: While various writers mentioned the magnifying properties of lenses sporadically into back into classical antiquity, magnifying lenses only came into more than occasional use as a reading accessory by the 13th century in Europe (mid-late TL3), spreading east from there to reach China within 200 years. They appeared first as hand lenses and very soon thereafter as spectacles. Spectacles perched on the nose and ear pieces weren’t invented until the 18th century.
Mortar and pestle: In western writing traditions, ink was only sometimes stored in dried form, but when it was, it was crushed into a powder rather than rubbed on an ink stone as in eastern traditions. Therefore, a well equipped writer might have a mortar and pestle nearby to prepare new ink.
Pointer: Several writing traditions used a pointer, which a reader could use to physically note the current line in a text or keep focus on the current position in a line while reading across it. This was very useful for traditions where dense writing made it easy to inadvertently skip lines and to keep dirty fingers from touching the text. However, not all pointers were purpose-built; a pen knife would do the job just as well, and Medieval writers are often depicted with a pen in one hand and a knife in the other.
Scribing guides: A number of writing traditions used tools to ensure that writing went across the page in straight, even rows. Some of these tools, like t-squares and straight edges, are familiar tools today, but some scribes used more exotic items. For example, some used a frame with strings stretched across it like the strings of a harp, defining evenly spaced rows for writing. The frame could be put on the page to guide writing or just drawing guidelines.
Sealing equipment: Possibly the most widespread way of authenticating documents, particularly for the wealthy and powerful, was with an elaborately carved stamp or seal. In addition to the seal itself, there are additional materials. A stamp might be used with regular, if specially colored, ink, or a more paste-like ink formula. Depending on the writing tradition, a seal might use wet clay or specially formulated sealing wax, often with a distinctive color and formulated to be difficult to tamper with undetected. Sealing wax requires its own paraphernalia, notably a heat source (usually a candle, but a brazier or hearth already used for heat will do as well) and a small vessel to melt the wax in.
Water reservoirs: Nearly all of these writing technologies rely on a supply of water to make dried ink liquid or keep liquid ink that way, and of course to clean off writing implements after use. Any office will have a few small bottles, jugs, and/or bowls of water.
Wax tablets: Found through the western world from around the 15th century BC and in use well into the modern era, wax tablets were used for note-taking and other transient records. A tablet resembled a thin picture frame with the picture area filled in with wax. A writer would write with the pointed end of a stylus, then “erase” as necessary by rubbing over marks with the blunt end. A tablet could be reused indefinitely.
Decoration
Something to keep in mind is that writing equipment, like everything else, is something which can be very plain, exceptionally fancy, and everything in between. And since writing gear is often something owned by aristocrats and high officials, it can be treasure in its own right: ivory pens with silver nibs, jeweled inkwells, exquisitely crafted ink stones, and so on. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables can let you get very specific about fancy equipment.
Illumination
Producing illuminated and other illustrated manuscripts (for example, in the Indian tradition of miniature paintings) is a subset of larger scribal traditions. In addition to the full range of writing tools here, it also involves brushes, paints, and probably adhesives, metal leaf, brushes, and burnishers for gilding. However, most offices won't have any of that.
Office Furniture
Scribes in some places, notably ancient Egypt but also to some extent in the Muslim world and India, might not work at a piece of furniture. Rather than being seated in a chair at a desk, they might be seated on the ground, and they would use a lap desk, a hard, smooth platform big enough to hold a piece of writing media.
Most work spaces, though, had a table at the center. But it wasn’t until the early modern era that desks in the modern sense, tables with drawers and other kinds of built-in storage, began to appear. Desks were purely working surfaces, with cupboards elsewhere in the room for storage. That said, some scribes in the Arabic or Persian tradition had a flat-topped box or chest which provided both a writing surface and storage.
Medieval European scribes, particularly those working on elaborate illuminated manuscripts, adopted specialized specialized furniture for it. Easel-like lecterns might be placed on the work table to hold an open book nearly vertically, or there might even be purpose-built angled desks to work at.
Seating followed general patterns of furniture usage in their societies. Europeans tended to use chairs or benches, while many societies farther east tended to but certainly did not always use very low tables so the writer would sit on the floor or on a cushion, carpet, or mat. Any reasonably well equipped scriptorium or office space would have readily recognizable shelves and cupboards to contain supplies and already written texts. For particularly sensitive documents, like secret correspondence or a business’s ledgers, an office might have a strongbox secured by a lock (Low-Tech, p. 119-122). Of course, exceptionally sensitive document, like letters outlining a conspiracy or secret affair, might be in a concealed compartment or an entirely different room altogether.
Offices tended not to have a great deal of artificial lighting. Until the widespread use of electricity, light meant fire and the vast majority of writing materials were very flammable. This doesn’t mean that candles and oil lamps were unknown in offices. Indeed, in some work spaces, they were unavoidable, but they did have to be used with care, and large chandeliers and candelabras were just asking for trouble. An ideal office space has plenty of natural light, which can limit the hours during which serious office work can be done.
Gadgets
Writers have experimented with a number of gadgets over the centuries to make their lives easier, though they tended not to catch on. Notably, a lot of writers spent a lot of time making copies, whether for personal use or distribution, so there was some effort towards making devices to ease that task. As early as the Roman imperial era, inventors experimented with devices called pantographs, which used linked wooden arms to duplicate the motion of a pen at one point in the system with another pen attached farther down. In theory, a pantograph let the user write a document twice with the same effort as writing it once. In practice, though, such device were clumsy and required extra effort to keep pens evenly inked. Later European traditions came up with a variety of standing lecterns and rotating carousels which could hold multiple books open for reference simultaneously. The most elaborate book holders were large wheels with self-orienting shelves on pivots. Each shelf was large enough to hold an open book, and the wheel could be rotated vertically to scroll between books, and the shelves, weighted on the bottom, kept themselves level.
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